.comment: Freedom's Just Another Word for Do It My Way - page 4

So What Is Free, Anyway?

February 12, 2001

By
Dennis E. Powell

It's all about politics, which is the
science of coercive systems. Coercion. Using whatever leverage
you can amass to force someone, who otherwise wouldn't, to do what
you want. Microsoft's employment of strong-arm tactics against
independent developers has a rich and well documented history. The
"Free" Software movement has a pretty colorful history in
this regard as well -- ask the folks at TrollTech. Ask the developers
of KDE. They were coerced into doing something that they would not
have otherwise done. Has the community benefited? Well, no. The
"Free" Software movement has, because it has another bloody
scalp on its belt. But it has improved neither QT nor KDE, and an
argument can be made that it has hindered both. It has certainly
deprived a number of would-be users easy access to those products,
because users of at least one distribution could not get those
packages where they normally got their software.

So it comes down to this: Are you more
interested in having a wide variety of software available to run on
your computer, or in helping some organization attain the power and
control that it seeks? And if it's the latter, to whom do you want to
give the control -- a hegemonistic corporation whose goals are
strictly its own, or a batch of ivory-tower Bolsheviks who also do
not have your best interests in mind?

Or would you rather make the choice
yourself? You decide whether you want a particular
application? You decide whether you need the source code for a
particular app, or whether it suits your purposes just fine to have
the binary alone? You decide whether you can endure an
advertising banner in your browser, want to cough up $39 for the
non-banner version, or say the hell with the whole thing?